If I Didn't Care
America. After December 7, 1941. Before May 17, 1954. Jim Crow is alive and well. Two women begin trips of discovery. MayBelle Washington, from St. Louis, sends her sons to all-black schools and advocates racial equality. Flo Maxwell, from an all-white Sundown town, travels to St. Louis for breast cancer treatment. She’s cured of her physical ailment, but learns about other scourges. Sub-standard public housing. Pearl Harbor and World War II. Racial exclusion in the military. It takes only a traffic accident to bring apartheid American style to a full head. The damaged cars are the same color, but the drivers aren’t. Which man should be arrested? MayBelle’s son or a white man in Flo’s hometown? And who’s to decide?
Roger McKnight is Professor Emeritus in Scandinavian Studies at Gustavus Adolphus College in Saint Peter, MN. He has degrees from Southern Illinois University and the University of Minnesota, and he completed studies at Gothenburg University in Sweden. A native of downstate Illinois, Roger has taught in Chicago, Stockholm, and San Juan, Puerto Rico. He is the author of several books, including the short story collection Hopeful Monsters and the documented book Severed Ties and Silenced Voices.
